Chambers Island Lighthouse

Fish Creek was so named by Increase Claflin who settled there, as has been stated, in 1842. For a few years he and his family lived here in solitude, the only one on the peninsula north of Sturgeon Bay. In 1847 he was joined by Van Renssa- Jaer Marshall who with his two sons, William and Van Renssalaer Marshall, moved up from the Bay Settlement near Green Bay in 1847. The elder Marshall froze to death in November, 1862. He was returning from Ephraim to Fish Creek by boat and as night drew on he for some unknown reason anchored at Eagle Island which was then deserted. He wrapped up in his sail and laid down in his boat to sleep. During the night it turned very cold and the old man did not again wake up. There were no other settlers until Asa Thorp came a few years later and opened up the country by his pier.

Passage source: History Of Door County Wisconsin The County Beautiful, published 1917.

Among the earliest to join the little settlement at Fish Creek, mostly as woodchoppers, were John and Stephen Norton. They came in 1857. In those days no saws were used in making cordwood. Yet some of these woodchoppers were able to put up three to four cords of wood per day with an axe. John and Steve Norton were great choppers, one winter putting up no less than 400 cords between them. The same year also came John Brown, the later sage of Fish Creek, Horace Poppleton, Michael F. Kalmbach and John Torrey. The latter had a house on the hill east of Fish Creek later known as the Barringer farm. He was a cooper. So were also Poppleton and Brown.

Passage source: History Of Door County Wisconsin The County Beautiful, published 1917.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

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